Sadly, the combination of lots of travelling during the last week (from Perth to Broome to Perth to Sydney and back to Perth all within in 7 days), the ‘excitement’ of Easter (and a broken front tooth now rubbing on my bottom lip) and trying to catch up has seen the inevitable happen The first bout of flu’ for the season.

Well I say ‘flu as we all do, when in all truth was know it is just a cold. And a bad cold is akin to Bird Flu. This is not that, although it is bad enough you could photograph it. Either way, between sneezes, coughs, splutters or Codril, this is a short blog this week.

On the plane between crocodiles and trophies we didn’t win, I saw a lot of TV. The plane to Broome was a sad little 717 where all passengers shared the one movie but the Perth – Sydney return flights were brand spanking new Airbus 320s with a screen each and around 300 channels (it seemed) to choose from. As is my want, I watched a lot of Top Gear.

I have waxed lyrical about the quality of the shooting in this show, and their adventurous and subtle use of Cokin filters to create the Top Gear ‘look’ as we call it in Australasian Camcorder magazine. But listening through headphones brought in a new dimension as well; the audio. I have mentioned before that audio is as important as the image quality in video, but not really discussed the quality of the audio. When it is done well, it makes an amazing difference.

Try it and see. Get a favourite movie out on DVD (or better, on Blu-ray) and have a listen. Then have a look at some of the tools you can use to accent your own video projects. My software of choice here is Sony Sound Forge, but Audacity which is shareware is also very good.